1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording/reproducing apparatus which can record/reproduce the beginning of a recording medium such as a CD or the beginning of each track into/from a magnetic storage medium such as a hard disk drive (HDD).
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, with development of the high density and low-price of a hard disk (HDD), the hard disk has been not only used as an external storage device of a personal computer but also used to store a large amount of sound contents. Many acoustic products have become available in the market.
For example, there is a music editing apparatus in which all the audio data written in a recording medium such as a compact disk (CD) loaded in a changer are previously written in a HDD in the digital form, and the written audio data are/read reproduced from the HDD. Although such an apparatus becomes large in size, it can reproduce the audio data from the HDD and hence does not require for the CD to be changed, thereby realizing comfortable continuous playback of music.
In order that music playback is not stopped during the track search or CD change in an ordinary CD changer, a reproducing apparatus in which the beginning audio data of a CD written previously in the HDD are read for playback and replaced by the audio data of the CD after track search or CD change has been completed. Such a reproducing apparatus is disclosed in JP-A-134586.
The control in the above conventional reproducing device is shown in a timing chart of FIG. 12. Now it is assumed that the beginning data of each of tracks (A0xe2x88x92A(nxe2x88x921)) is previously written in a HDD and searching is performed from a certain track (track a) to another track (track b).
First, while the audio data on the track a of a certain CD is reproduced, it is read by a pick-up unit 2 and written in a buffer memory (FIG. 12C). The audio data is read from the buffer memory and played back through a speaker (FIGS. 12D and 12E).
At this time, when a track search (or disk change) command is received, the audio data at the beginning (track bxe2x80x2) of the track b of the CD to be reproduced subsequently is read (FIG. 12A), and the audio data thus read is written in the buffer memory. The read of the audio data from the buffer memory is started and the audio data sequentially read from the buffer memory is produced as the reproduced sound at the beginning of the track to be subsequently reproduced (FIG. 12B). Meanwhile, the booting for track search or disk change is performed.
Upon completion of the booting, the read of the audio data by the pickup unit is started from the track b (FIG. 12C), and the audio data thus read is written in the buffer memory. The write of the audio data is made from the data at the address successive to the data at a pertinent address of the track, for example the data from an address A10 if the pertinent address is A9 at ten second relative to the track b (n=10). Thereafter, the audio data is read sequentially from the buffer memory by the normal playback (FIG. 12D).
As a result, as seen from (FIG. 12E), without stopping the playing during the track search or CD change, the playback can be performed in the sequence of the audio data (track a) from the CD, the audio data from the HDD (track bxe2x80x2) and audio data (track b) from the CD.
In order to perform the playback continuously without stopping the playing during the track search or CD change, the above conventional recording/reproducing apparatus requires an operation of previously recording the information relative to the beginnings in the recording medium in an HDD.
An object of the present invention is to provide a recording/reproducing apparatus capable of effectively recording the information relative to beginnings in a recording medium such as a CD.
In order to attain the above object, there is provided a recording/reproducing apparatus comprising:
storage means for storing information read from a recording medium on which the information is written in a prescribed number of groups;
means for reading the information on said recording medium; and
control means for controlling the write in said storage means of at least a prescribed time of information corresponding to a beginning address of each of said groups.
Preferably, said means for reading reads the information on said recording medium at a speed of N-times as high as a normal speed.
Preferably, said control means controls the write of the information read from said recording medium while it controls reproduction of the information written in said storage means at any time.
Preferably, said control means causes a prescribed time of information of the information written in said storage means to be held therein and the other information to be discarded after reproduction.
Preferably, said control means correlatively manages said prescribed time of information written in said storage means and the recording medium in which it has been written.
Preferably, the recording/reproducing apparatus comprises: means for detecting identification information for identifying said recording medium, and where said prescribed time of information contained in the recording medium identified by said identifying means has been already written in said storage means, said control means inhibits write of the information into said storage means.
Preferably, the recording/reproducing apparatus further comprises: a holding member for holding a plurality of recording media, and said control means causes said storage means to store said prescribed time of information relative to all said recording media held in said holding member.
Preferably, after said control means causes said storage means to store said prescribed time of information relative to all said recording media held in said holding member, it continues reproduction using the information remaining in said storage means.
Preferably, after said control means causes said storage means to store said prescribed time of information relative to all said recording media held in said holding portion, it continues reproduction using the information recording in said recording media.
Preferably, said recording means is a compact disk and said storage means is a hard disk drive.
In accordance with the configuration of the present invention; partial information such as the beginning data of each of chapters is read from a recording medium and written in storage medium at a higher speed than that in a normal reproduction while the normal reproduction is carried out using a buffer memory. This configuration makes it unnecessary to record the information beforehand, and permits a unreproduciable blank in reproduction to be filled with audio information during track search or CD change while the reproduction is carried out normally. After the chapters relative to all CDs have been written in the HDD, reproduction is carried out using the information remaining in the HDD. This reproduction is more resistant to external disturbance than the case of reproduction using an optical pick-up. Otherwise, after the chapters relative to all CDs have been written in the HDD, reproduction is carried out using the information written in the CDs. This reproduction does not require the read/write of the information for the HDD, and hence realizes power saving. The present invention can be applied to not only the normal reproduction but also to the trick play such as shuffle, scan, etc. Therefore, continuous reproduction can be realized without stopping the playing during track/disk searching or disk changing.
The above and other objects and features of the invention will be more apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.